Like a mirage lurking in a dip in the highway, Palm Springs shimmers enticingly atop the Sonoran Desert, an impossibly green splotch on a canvas of tawny brown. Outside the city, the flat, sandy landscape is broken only rarely by scraggly tamarisk trees, yucca plants and pathetic shrubs twisted by relentless desert winds.

Robert julian's little neighborhood is on the southwest side of Palm Springs, where the San Jacinto Mountains begin to rise from the desert floor like the spires of a great cathedral. Warm Sands is an older neighborhood, a mix of vintage ranches and glassy contemporaries. There are cactuses and fruit trees, a health food shop, the oldest hardware store in town and -- displayed prominently on one corner lot -- a 5-foot-tall sculpture of a phallus.

It should have taken two hours and 15 minutes to get here from the Westside. Instead, the rain, traffic and the fact that it was a Friday conspired against me. Two hours and 15 minutes into my drive, I was still on the stinkin' San Bernardino Freeway crawling at 8 mph through one of those dang Covinas. Didn't El Nino understand? I was a woman on the edge.

PALM SPRINGS was Hollywood's backyard in the 1930s when this home was built, but it wasn't until the late '50s that a screen star was connected with the estate. Elizabeth Taylor came onto the desert scene then and rented the home for several months from the widow of Leo Spitz, its original owner and co-founder of Universal International Studios. At the end of Taylor's stay, in 1957, she said "yes" to Mike Todd, producer of the movie "Around the World in 80 Days," and they wed in Acapulco.

Investigators on Friday officially blamed defective brakes for a bus accident that killed seven people on a Girl Scout tour here last month, but said the driver might have prevented the crash had he used a lower gear while descending the steep grade where the wreck occurred. If driver Richard A.

A Palm Springs police officer has been put on paid administrative leave while prosecutors consider whether to charge him with rape, authorities said Friday. Anthony Pilutik, an officer on the force for the last 10 months, has been on leave since July 18 when a woman in southwest Palm Springs accused him of raping her, said Palm Springs police Cmdr. Michael McCabe. On Friday, police forwarded the result of an investigation to the Riverside County district attorney's office for review, he said.

Robert julian's little neighborhood is on the southwest side of Palm Springs, where the San Jacinto Mountains begin to rise from the desert floor like the spires of a great cathedral. Warm Sands is an older neighborhood, a mix of vintage ranches and glassy contemporaries. There are cactuses and fruit trees, a health food shop, the oldest hardware store in town and -- displayed prominently on one corner lot -- a 5-foot-tall sculpture of a phallus.

From the onset of Indian gambling a decade ago, this desert resort has been the nation's prize target for casino promoters, the one place with the potential to become another Las Vegas. But there was a problem--the Agua Caliente Indians, who own much of the land here, wanted no part of gambling.

Easter Week as this community has known and endured it--that tradition of youthful revelry, the stuff of legend and song about Where the Boys (and Girls) Are, of cruisin' and boozin'--is being laid to rest here this week. It was pushing 40, struggling with its own midlife crisis, a victim of clogged arteries and increasingly sociopathic tendencies. It succumbed with some members of its family at its side, "breakers" who hoped that they could still breathe life into it.

Strollers on downtown streets in this vacation mecca may get a surprise next time they gaze up at the desert sky: Someone may be gazing back. Trendy Palm Canyon Drive, a tourist favorite prowled by everyone from Hollywood's elite to bikers from Reseda, is about to get a battery of police surveillance cameras to keep an eye on the millions who visit each year. The city hopes the cameras will reduce crime along the bustling strip of shops, bars and restaurants.

Like Frank Sinatra, Palm Springs has fallen in and out of fashion, but never out of style. Given its desert and mountain scenery, historic architecture and bountiful shopping options, it's hard to top as a winter weekend getaway. But if you need another excuse to visit, why not plan a trip around the annual Palm Springs International Film Festival, when the town gets an infusion of Hollywood buzz and glitz, sans the attitude? Running Jan.

Rudolph W. Giuliani is married to his third wife, his kids barely talk to him and he's comfortable with leaving intact the national policy permitting abortion. Oh -- and he's the former mayor of New York City, a modern Gomorrah to many here at the biennial conference of the National Federation of Republican Women. You'd think that Giuliani would get little more than a polite round of applause from the mostly conservative crowd of 2,000 women.

Looking for an inexpensive family holiday that won't be too hard on the budget? Picturesque La Quinta Resort & Club near Palm Springs is less than a gas tank away and is offering an $89-a-night summer special. The deal: The Summer Splash Family Blast special is available through Aug. 31. It includes an overnight stay in a resort casita, child's gift and a child's meal with each paid adult meal. Rates start at $89 Sundays through Thursdays; weekend rates start at $129.

Desert golf. At a glance the phrase appears almost oxymoronic, conjuring up images of British expatriates blasting their way across the Outback or endless expanses of colonial African sand. But modern agronomical and engineering techniques have changed all that, making golf not only viable but a prime recreational drawing card throughout the American Southwest -- and nowhere more than in Southern California's legendary golfing mecca, Palm Springs.

Conflicting reports about when state fire officials first identified accused serial arsonist Raymond Lee Oyler -- before or after he allegedly set a wildfire near Palm Springs that killed five firefighters -- have escalated tension between the Riverside County Sheriff's Department and the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Underlying the dispute is the question of whether Oyler could have been arrested earlier, possibly preventing the deaths of the firefighters.

MY friend Todd, a New Yorker, abhors fruity martinis. He can spot wood veneer at 50 paces and gets antsy around imperfect service. This is not to say that Todd is demanding; let's just say he's an arbiter of taste. Todd likes Palm Springs, though, and that's where we met up in January.

The mood was grim, funereal. Captains of the nation's wind energy industry had gathered in San Francisco for their 1987 annual convention, but no one was having much fun. No wonder. The American wind industry, hatched in a climate of giddy optimism in the early 1980s, had taken a frightful tumble. Lucrative federal and state tax credits, which prompted rows of windmills to sprout like wildflowers in California's gusty passes, had expired, dramatically slowing new installations.

Three carefully chosen words were all David Triplitt needed to explain why he was spending Easter Break beneath the cloudless skies of Palm Springs. "Babes in G-strings," the Cal State Fresno senior said matter-of-factly. "Babes in G-strings." Triplitt, 23, rolled into town with three fraternity buddies Saturday night.

A magnitude 4.4 earthquake struck six miles southeast of Mt. San Gorgonio early Tuesday, less than four hours after a 4.1 foreshock hit in the same area. Palm Springs police said they took no calls reporting damage in the area. Several aftershocks, including a magnitude 2.8 temblor, followed the 4.4 quake that struck at 12:31 a.m., said Caltech seismologist Kate Hutton.

A man who crashed his pickup through a gate and drove across two active runways at Palm Springs International Airport remained in critical condition at Desert Regional Medical Center on Monday after being shot by police. Michael Broderick, 39, faces multiple counts of attempted murder of a police officer after the incident early Sunday.